Tanked
by Prime627
Summary: Arcee lived a great life for a swimmer, and then her wonderful life was gone, as was her pool and her little cart...and then all that was gone and replaced with tank after tank after tank... Will she ever get back home?
1. Chapter 1

Arcee swam in tight circles, her owner tossing her spoiled Energon that she swam after and forced into her mouth. She surfaced and sprayed mist at him out of her mouth, and she purred when he stroked her helm.

"Lovely. So lovely." He smiled down at her and he tickled under her chin. She clutched at his servo, and let him reach into the water and pet her smoothe skin. She smiled and hugged his neck, letting him lift her up and carry her around.

He laid her in a cart of sorts, similiar to what femmes put their sparklings in, only she had a larger place to lay and a soft cushion to lay on. She was kept away from the sunlight so her skin wouldn't dry out and she was often stopped so people could visit with her.

Three out of five bots that stopped them thought she was beautiful. The other two would scream or demand to know _what in the Pits of Kaon is that_ when they expected a sparkling. Her owner would growl at those two bots out of five, and he would shelter his beloved pet once again. Then they would go walking, and they would visit the Energon stand and the mech would buy her a sweet cube as a treat.

Their days were often spent like that, until one day, it was different.

Arcee swam in her tight circles, begging and purring for her spoiled Energon. But he was with another mech and didn't pay attention to her. She made a worried, confused sound as she surfaced, and when she sprayed mist at him, he patted her helm and pushed her away, tossing a small rubber ball for her to play with. It floated, forgotten, on the surface while a ladder was set up and the mech her owner was with climbed in with her.

The water wasn't deep. It was a nice level for her owner to stand up in since he couldn't swim, and there was enough water to keep Arcee interested and under the water. And it allowed the mech to retrieve her.

He wrapped her in a blanket, blinded her with a strip of cloth, and lifted her up. She was placed in a tank in a trailer and she pressed her servo to the glass, blinking sadly at her owner. She wailed for him, but he stood there, his servo on the glass over hers, and he looked away from her.

Credits were pressed into his other servo and Arcee was spark-broken. She was...sold. She wasn't special at all, not like how he had made her believe. She pulled her pink servo away and bared her denta at him.

He took several steps back, and then the trailer was moving, trailed behind her new owner's alt-mode as he took her away from her home. But was it really her home after all?

 **ooo**

Arcee was placed in a very deep, very wide tank. She swam around it, confused. She didn't understand the purpose of this. She brought her fists against it, she beat her tail against it, and then something happened. There was an explosion of bubbles, and a silvery body pressed against hers.

Megatron was a breeder male, and he had learned what it took to get fed. He pressed the pink femme up against the wall, his servos roaming her body and pressing his digits into her slit. She struggled, and then stopped when she saw her audience, who were taking pictures, clapping, and, heard vaguely through the glass and water, cheering. Tears welled up in her optics and she was turned around, her body trembling while Megatron's spike struck home.

He was confused. The other femmes he had fragged for food were purring and giggling. They had come from other aquariums, other farms...where had this one come from? She bore no tag, no piercing. The only thing she had was a seal that was quickly broken.

And then his coding was inside her, and she was sinking to the bottom of the tank. She needed to surface every half hour due to her lack of gills, and Megatron had to keep moving forward due to his gills. So he swam back up to the owner and chirped, getting fed just as promised due to weeks of training and learning years ago. He swam into his sling and was transported back into his tank with Cyclonus and Tarn, both purple mechs tending to their own needs, be it swimming in circles near the surface as he wailed for his usual partner, or sulking in the corner in a hollow rock with his tentacles protruding from the entrance, curling and uncurling while young and old grounders pressed their faces against the glass until Cyclonus scared them back several feet for only a couple seconds.

Arcee was fed. The owner dropped several cubes into her tank, but they sank to the bottom, unwanted. A pile would grow, Megatron predicted as he pressed his servos against the glass. He could just see her from his tank, smashed between a black and white femme the owner affectionately called Dit, who had a sister named Dash before Dash was moved to a different aquarium across Cybertron, and three fast mechs called Star, Sky, and Thunder.

The owner had a visitor, and they were fussing over Arcee's environment.

"Doesn't she have a shelter? A partner? She should really be surrounded by her own kind. That would cheer her up."

"I can't just throw her into Dit's tank. Dit will devore her for a snack."

The femme in question, also lacking gills, surfaced and sprayed mist out of her nostrils, shedding water from her face and arms as she clung to the edge and pulled her midsection up far enough to lay it over the edge. She fanned her tail, waiting for a treat. What she got was a glare, and she dove back into the water.

The expert nodded slowly and touched Arcee's tank, spreading his digits out to encompass the most glass he could. Arcee raised her helm and blinked at the servo. She reached out slowly, and she placed her own webbed servo over the expert's.

The mech smiled and tapped the glass just above her, moving to the right towards the ladder. Arcee followed his servo, interested. She caught on, realizing that he was heading towards the platform over her tank. She surged upwards, leaping over it in a show of speed and ability. The mech reached out just in time to stroke her underbelly, where the armor there was softer and more delicate. She huffed at him when she surfaced again, and she let him pet her.

"Optimus?"

The mech stopped petting her and looked at the owner. "If I bring you a femme for this one and one for Dit, will you treat them like sentient beings? I have another pink femme, one of my favorites, one of my pets, but she is getting too large, and I cannot care for her." Tears started to form in his optics. Arcee could see them. She tipped her helm.

"That's what happened to this little one. She's an orphan, as what the staff here like to call the ones that are loved, but can't be cared for anymore," the owner said as he knelt, reaching out to stroke Arcee's helm. Had she been thinking straight and still mad at him, she would have snapped at his digits. But then she heard what he said. She was _what_? She had to be given up?

Optimus stood, and he and the owner walked down the ladder slowly as they spoke. Arcee swam to the bottom of the tank and touched the cubes. They were spoiled, just as she had always liked her Energon. She swallowed them quickly, and watched Optimus leave before she blinked at the owner's servo, digits spread, and pressed against the glass. She touched it.

"You'll be getting a tankmate in there pretty soon. And from all description, she looks like you."

She blinked and settled down, sighing a stream of bubbles as she watched the owner go. She blinked at the tank across from hers, smiled softly at the femme inside trying to care for her excited calf that swam everywhere but her waiting arms until they collided, tumbling over and over through the water until the femme was smiling down at the giggling little one. Arcee felt a pang of wanting and of jealousy, and she swam around her tank, conjuring an image of a pink femme mimicking her every move.

 **ooo**

The next day, there was a lot of activity around Arcee's tank. She saw Optimus carrying a pink femme almost as large as him (the swimmers tended to get very big very fast) and he was wobbling up the ladder, some mechs helping, some mechs standing and watching. And then the femme was in the water, clinging to Optimus like Arcee had done to her previous owner. He dove into the water and swam with the femme, holding her face and stroking her helm while she whined and keened for him to stay.

Arcee frowned. Her owner hadn't done that to her, not once. She wanted to swim closer, to see what was happening, but she remained at the bottom.

Optimus eventually left the femme to help the others get a massive blue femme with large flukes and a long tail into Dit's tank, who was watching in fear. The femme was bigger and older than she.

Arcee swam to greet her mourning tankmate, who had a similiar tail and no gills. She was still grieving her owner, watching him leave the aquarium with his helm and shoulders down.

Arcee made the mistake of touching the femme's back. The larger femme had her servos around her neck and was driving the smaller one down to the bottom of the tank so fast, all the owner and the staff had time to do was gasp.

"Elita!"

Optimus was back, smashing his fist on the tank glass. It made the bigger femme look up and her blue optics stretched wide in horror before she swam to the opposite side of the tank and wailed.

Arcee swam to the platform, blinking at Optimus with wide eyes while he touched and stroked her neck. "I am sorry. I thought I had trained her to be gentle. She is a siren. I am sure you do not know what that means. She lures things to their deaths, and she can be unpredictable. I would not leave her here if I had another choice. I am sorry..."

She watched Optimus leave, crying for him to stay. She didn't want to be here, didn't want to be in this tank with that femme who glared at her every moment. But she had to. Her own owner didn't have a choice, either...

She laid on her back, her optics closed and her mouth open. She dreamed of her owner, who was fading and fading every time he came to visit with her, his smile sinking into a deep frown each time Arcee saw him. And then he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Arcee swam around in her tank, amusing the ones that came to visit. The aquarium was failing after several months, and after she had shown an interest in retrieving fallen objects for the workers on her filter, Arcee was trained to retrieve coins, toys, and a magnet ball. She gave them back, dropping them down to the thrower, who tipped well for the entertainment until it became boring. Then she was blindfolded, and then she was both blindfolded and cuffed, but no matter what the mech did, he found himself unable to pay the bills of keeping so many swimmers.

He started selling the swimmers, first with Dit, and then with Optimus' blue femme he gifted him. Next to go was Tailspin, Springtop, and then he resorted to selling the mechs every other week until he had Elita, Arcee, Megatron, Tarn, and Cyclonus left.

Only a servoful of bots came to see them, and the owner was at the end of his rope. He sold the remaining swimmers to a collector.

 **ooo**

Arcee was placed in an outside pool full of other pink femmes and one pink-ish male. The collector was watching their transition over the passed few weeks, and he leaned in every other day to pluck a sparkling out of the water when it came close enough. He dropped them into a barrel and then he walked off when it was full, selling the sparklings to the mechs that were there every day almost.

Arcee wanted out. She tried to jump out of her new home and into the one full of mechs, which happened to hold Megatron. She wanted someone familiar, someone she knew would touch her the way she wanted. She wanted to be soothed.

While the collector wasn't looking, she flopped into the pool, hurrying over the burning plates of Cybertron under her. She could feel her armor drying up and she was ready to howl, only Megatron hauled her in and gave her a quizzical stare and a soft shake, a swat on the helm that translated to: _What were you thinking? Stupid sparkling..._

But Arcee wrapped her arms around him and clung to him, trembling as she whined and pressed against him.

 _I want to get out of here_ , she thought and she squeezed her optics closed. She wanted to be with him forever, until she was old and near death.

But the collector had other ideas. He tore them apart and tossed Arcee back into her pool.

And that's when the sirens and lights came.

The swimmers all looked up and hauled themselves up over the edge to get a better look at what was going on.

Two officers transformed and crossed their arms.

"We've gotten reports you've exceeded your swimmer-limit. You know you're only allowed to have three femmes and a mech on one acre of property, and this looks like one acre and a whole lot more than just four swimmers."

Everyone but Arcee ducked under the water when one of the officers walked over, and she let the femme pet her.

"Strongarm, leave three femmes of your choice. I'll leave a mech. Then get the others in their moving tanks."

"Where will we take them?"

"Where they belong. The zoo."

Arcee blinked up at the femme, and opened her arms. She wanted to get out of that pool, out of the collector's servos. She hated it there, hated it with the femmes. But she couldn't leave Elita. So she pointed at the larger femme.

"Bumblebee, come help me with the next femme. She's massive."

"If she's too big, we'll have to leave her." Bumblebee walked over and he shook his helm. "Nah, she'll fit."

Arcee clung to the femme officer, burying her face in the femme's neck. Oh, how she longed for physical contact...

"Bumblebee, she won't let go."

He was dragging Elita over the plates of Cybertron, looking up at her. "She likes you. Lay her in your interior in a damp blanket. She'll enjoy it."

"Do we really have to take them to the zoo?" Strongarm asked when they were done packing up the mechs and femmes, leaving behind the legal number of swimmers.

Arcee was examined by a medic as soon as she arrived in the zoo.

"She's young, but she is stressed. Look at her armor." He stroked her tail to where it was peeling back and revealing a pale white color. "So far, this one, the silver male, the other pink femme, and the two purple males have this stressing visible. They were probably moved around a lot and they just want to be home."

Strongarm frowned and she looked down at Arcee, petting her helm gently. "I could look into her old home. I'm sure the collector got her from somewhere."

"I think returning to her old home would do her some good."


End file.
